The Future of Television: Change is Coming Fast
Earlier this week, I served on a panel for the Federal Communication Commission public hearing on media ownership here in Tampa. I was selected, primarily because of my personal blog, as the lone “blogger” representative - and talked a little about the future.
In recent weeks, there have been some significant issues related to the future of media.
Yahoo signed a deals with Viacom and Comcast to provide advertising. Google purchased Doubleclick, and earlier this year announced a deal to place advertising via Dish. NewsCorp is making a bid for Dow Jones (owner of the Wall Street Journal).
These announcements will all have an effect on the immediate future of the media.
But what about long term?
Jeff Pulver has a recent post on his blog talking about the future of television.
As a reminder, for the past seven years, billions of dollars of fixed-line revenue has been lost by phone companies around the world as their customers have given up using fixed telephone lines in favor of purchasing their primary phone service from wireless carriers. This trend is known as “Wireless Conversion” and this is revenue which will most likely never be replaced by the phone companies.
In the near future, I expect cable companies may start to suffer a similar parallel fate as the wireline phone companies. This eventually will mean billions of dollars of revenue loss without any notion of being able to replace the lost revenue. And I expect we will start to see this trend happen first in the 16-24 year old demographic.
How does this happen? It happens because there is a portion of the existing 16-24 generation which does not watch traditional broadcast TV and they are not watching Cable TV. What they are watching is TV content on the internet. And when these kids leave home and go off to college, they are not signing up for cable TV service in their dorm rooms. Instead they are continuing to watch their favorite TV shows thanks to BitTorrent or are going online to the network websites to catch up with a missed show or in some cases they are also going to iTunes and purchasing the shows to watch on their video iPods and computers.
Kfir Pravda is warning cable companies:
It seems to me that these industries are kind of dinosaurs, looking at the meteor coming and thinking that everything will be ok. Just like some of the big production companies, missing the fact that people create good content for fraction of the money they are spending.
Yes, my dear. The future is TVoIP. Get used to it.
Imagine a world where you can download in some still-to-be-invented application or device all the shows you want to watch… think TiVo on steroids, here. New “hit shows” like Lost, CSI, Desperate Housewives, Heroes, 24, etc are uploaded by the producers (not the networks) to their server. You can get new episodes of Jeopardy or Oprah or Days of Our Lives this way as well. Your device downloads them automatically, because you programmed it to do so (like your TiVo). But there’s more. Shows that are now “syndicated” can be downloaded, too. Want to watch the 3rd season of Seinfeld? or the 1st season of Sex in the City? or the entire run of the original Star Trek? Download ‘em all!
Michael Eisner has an teen drama airing on MySpace. The BBC recently launched iPlayer. NBC, NewsCorp, and Comcast have signed an agreement to provide shows online. The BBC is the latest European network to provide online programming.
Joost is one site that is aggregating a lot of these already:
In Tuesday’s deal with Time Warner Inc.’s Turner Broadcasting System, Joost said it would air episodes of “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” and “Robot Chicken” from Turner’s Adult Swim network along with “Larry King Live” and other CNN news and interview programs.
Joost also announced several other content deals Tuesday:
_ Sony Corp. will run episodes of several old TV series including “Charlie’s Angels” and “Starsky & Hutch” on Joost;
_ Time Warner’s Sports Illustrated will run photo shoots and programs about its swimsuit issue;
_ The National Hockey League will broadcast vintage games and game highlights; and
_ Hasbro Inc. will run old episodes of “Transformers” and “G.I. Joe.”
Joost has previously signed deals with Viacom Inc., Warner Music Group Corp. and CBS Corp.
The numbers are even more staggering in Europe — where 45% of people are watching some amount of TV online. Almost HALF of Europe.
That future is dangerous - not only for cable providers, but for local television affiliates, too. Who needs local stations when you can get your entertainment from the web? The Tampa Bay affiliate for CW and independent moreTV 32 don’t show local news. They have network, syndicated, and paid programming. They will be among the first to shut down. Then the local news channels will be forced to close when the national networks shift totally over to online programming.
This will have a dramatic effect on advertising. As Google and Yahoo develop their ad placement technology, it will be possible for the local businesses to advertise to local TVoIP viewers. But not every program will be advertiser supported — the more popular ones will be pay-per-view. Heck, some of them are already: you can get Lost on iTunes, for example.
Blonde 2.0 says it best:
There is a real revolution emerging right before our eyes which will change the way we have viewed and defined TV till now. I believe that within a few years time, we will see the internet establish itself as the leader of all media and that more and more services and technologies will be offered to those watching and those who want to be watched. All I can say is: Watch out broadcast TV - times are a-changin’ and you’re going down.
